When Chatham girls go wild

Parents object to heavy-handed school administrators

Next to “like,” I believe the most
overused word in the English language is “ironic.” It’s,
like, you turn 12, and you learn, like, this cool word, and you suddenly
realize that, like, your whole life is chockfull of irony. OK, I’ll stop with the “like.”
Let’s go straight to the irony. Last Thursday was “Tag Day” at Glenwood
Middle School. It’s not an official event; it’s a kid-generated
end-of-the-year custom in which marker-wielding adolescents attempt to
scribble numbers on each other. It’s a tradition that the Grown Ups
try their best to snuff out because, after all, markers can lead to, well,
marks and stuff. The tagging started in the cafeteria, which serves as
the holding pen where all the kids are corralled between the time
they’re dropped off and the time classes begin at 8:10 a.m. Almendra
Rodriguez asked her friend Kate Turasky whether she could mark an 11 on her
arm (2011 being the year they’ll graduate) and Kate said sure. As
they were walking to their lockers, a teacher questioned Kate about the
marks, so Almendra — using the kind of creativity only a 13-year-old
can conjure to try to evade punishment — added a curved line under
the 11, thereby creating a smiley face. The dodge didn’t work. They ended up in the
principal’s office — Almendra, Kate, and so many other tagging
suspects that some kids had to sit on the floor. Kate was in the office so
long, she missed all but 10 minutes of her history final. Almendra took two
final exams in the office before being sent home with a two-day suspension
for “bullying.” Almendra is an immigrant from Chile. Her mother,
Veronica Luz Espina — a teacher in the Riverton School District and
an instructor at University of Illinois at Springfield — immediately
contacted every media outlet and the ACLU to complain that her
daughter’s harsh punishment had more to do with her refusal to
participate in the Pledge of Allegiance than any mark she drew on
Kate’s arm. And though there’s no official comment from
GMS, Espina’s theory sounds plausible in the face of an otherwise
perplexing scenario. Maybe it’s just me, but I have a hard time
wrapping my mind around the concept that a completely consensual smiley
face — rendered in washable purple ink — could constitute
bullying. I left four messages for GMS administrators, asking
for their side of this story, but no one returned my call. I browsed the
student handbook, but the section on bullying doesn’t mention
anything about smiley faces drawn by a friend. Amy Mann, mom of Kate — the
“victim” here — met with administrators Friday to protest
Almendra’s punishment. “They asked me, ‘Well, do you want
her to come home with drawings on her?’ And, honestly, I don’t
care!” Mann says. “These are good kids. They don’t do
anything wrong, and they don’t hurt anybody.” Here’s where the first irony comes in: Last
year, Mann says, Kate was the victim of real and relentless bullying, and
GMS administrators wouldn’t do anything about it. “There was a big group of people, spreading
rumors that I was suicidal and Gothic, telling me I should just go kill
myself,” Kate says. The bullies happened to be the kind of kids Kate
isn’t (and doesn’t want to be) — “very preppy, very
sporty, perky all the time and pretty popular.” Some of them had been
her friends, back when they all listened to rap, before she started
listening to Nirvana. “I wasn’t acting different. Maybe I
wasn’t as perky as they are, but I never was,” Kate says.
“Yeah, I wore [dark] makeup last year. I don’t do it as bad
this year. But I’m not Gothic or suicidal.” The administration apparently developed the same view
of Kate — as a scary, suicidal freak — because when she left
her journal in her science class earlier this year, all heck broke loose. “My daughter has never been in trouble. No lie.
Kindergarten all the way up,” Mann says. “And I got a call a
month and a half ago that she had made a threat against her
school.” Responding to an urgent summons to the
principal’s office, Mann and her husband were presented with a
notebook in which Kate had outlined a fiendish plot for the last day of
school. First they would shut off the power by throwing some
switch they found in the gym, and then they would throw confetti, spray
Silly String, and write with lipstick on the bathroom mirrors,
“School’s out for summer!” “They were treating this like a Columbine-style
threat,” Mann says. “They wanted her to scrub floors with the
janitors for three days after school — for something she hadn’t
even done.” The family finally plea-bargained Kate’s punishment
down to a Saturday detention. Here’s another irony: This year, the bullying
stopped — not because the bullies got suspended but because, Mann
says, her daughter “evolved.” “Last year, I cared more what everybody thought
of me. This year, I really don’t,” Kate says. “I have a
lot of better friends, and I couldn’t care less what those girls say
about me anymore.” One of her better friends is Almendra, the
“bully” who drew the smiley on her arm last Thursday. Kate is
so, like, terrified of Almendra, she invited her to spend the whole weekend at her
house.